Skylark gave an incredulous laugh at her own gullibility. Then she realised she had shown too much of herself. She looked ahead.
“We’ve reached Taihape,” she said. “And don’t think you can get around me so easily, just by being nice about my singing.”
“Already?” Arnie’s eyebrows arched with surprise. “Nice driving, Skylark.” Then, “I’m hungry,” he said. “I could eat a horse and drink a river dry. Let’s stop and have lunch when we hit the town.”
“You also need a visit to a bathroom,” Skylark said. “Your breath is so awful you could turn me to stone — and don’t be tempted to do it.”
Arnie could have given a smart reply but realised that he had turned the corner with Skylark. After all, she’d been nice to him during the Cook Strait crossing. If he was nice back, maybe they’d get along better. For the first time since they’d started the trip they’d been able to have a conversation — a short one, sure — without getting at each other’s throats. It was a start.
Skylark turned into a parking space. Arnie found a restaurant, and left Skylark to order food while he made a visit to the bathroom with a toothbrush, towel and soap. When he came back he was washed, brushed and combed, and Skylark had ordered herself a pie with peas and chips, washed down with coffee.
“What!” Skylark asked. She just knew, just knew that Arnie was going to criticise her selection. Well, she needed carbos, wanted carbos and was going to get carbos — and she just felt like a pie, thank you very much.
“I think I’ll have the same,” Arnie said, deciding to keep the peace, though what he really yearned for was a nice piece of lean steak, some salad and an energy drink to get his electrolyte levels back up. He took a bite out of the pie: “Mmm, good,” he lied. Somewhere over the next few days, he vowed, he’d just have to find a gym.
After lunch, Skylark visited the women’s room. She scrubbed her face till it shone, put her hair up in butterfly clips, sprayed some perfume in the air and stood under the mist. Arnie, waiting for her by the ute, was pleased she’d made the effort to look like — well, a person of her gender, for a change, but decided on balance not to say anything about it. Why tempt fate?
Skylark handed Arnie the keys. She too had done some thinking about having Arnie tagging along. She’d taken a reality check. They were stuck with each other. May as well try to get on, right?
“Thanks,” Arnie said. “Maybe you can take over once we get to Auckland.”
They hit the road. For a while they were silent, trying to figure out where to go next.
“Are you related to Hoki and Bella?” Skylark asked at last.
“Why do you ask?” Arnie answered. He was edgy, trying to be careful. If he started to talk, things might fall out that would get them arguing again. After all, it was obvious they were from different planets. She was a spoilt little know-everything girl who used her jersey, badges, mouth and attitude as weapons against the world. Did he want her to know him better?
Arnie decided to take the chance. “No,” he began. “I’m not related. I come from Invercargill. My Mum and Dad had nine of us. My Dad was seventeen when he met Mum. She was still at high school. His name’s George. Her name’s Anna. I suppose they were in love but I wasn’t around to see. By the time I arrived, number seven in the family, there wasn’t much love left. And both Dad and Mum were on the dole.”
“But there must have been something,” Skylark answered, trying to keep the small talk going. “After all, another two children came after you.”
“Yeah, well,” Arnie said, “having sex was a habit they couldn’t break.”
Small house. Nine kids. Mum and Dad out of work. In the lounge was a photograph of them on their wedding day; when Arnie compared them to the present-day parents he would ask himself: Where did those two bright eyed and handsome young kids go to? Who stole Dad away and substituted the fat, foul-mouthed, violent slob whose only object in life was to go out, get drunk, come back and take it out on the wife and kids? What happened to the shy girl called Anna who became a woman with a scowl, hipping the latest baby from room to room, scattering cigarette ash on the way?
“By the time I was born,” Arnie continued, “luckily my oldest sisters, Gina and Sophia, were bringing home a weekly paycheck from their checkout jobs. It was Gina really who brought me up; Mum and Dad were too zonked out to do it. In those days I was the runt of the litter. Dad used to call me Short Arse. At school I got the usual nicknames: Tiny, Squint, Midget, Munchkin. I guess that’s why I started to go to the gym. Build up some bulk. I think I was trying to compensate so that if anybody tried to put me down I could bop them one. Then Gina and Sophia got married and left home, so us younger kids started to be farmed out to foster parents.”
Some had been good. Some had been bad. One of the foster dads had tried to put his hands down Arnie’s pants and Arnie had smashed him. The foster dad denied it, got off, and Arnie began to receive a reputation as being difficult. Then, the usual story: he joined a gang of delinquents. Before you knew it, he was living under bridges, sniffing glue and breaking into houses and cars.
“That’s when Auntie Hoki and Auntie Bella came along,” Arnie said. “Social Welfare thought the best thing to do was to get me away from unsavoury influences. They got in contact with Dad’s tribe and Auntie Hoki and Auntie Bella said they’d take me in. That’s how I ended up in Tuapa. They turned me round. If it hadn’t been for them I don’t know where I’d be now. Probably in prison. I stayed with them while I finished college. Later, I found the job at Lucas’s garage and moved to my own place in town.”
Waiouru was ahead. The Army settlement looked like packing crates pushed accidentally out of a military transporter.
“Did Bella and Hoki tell you I joined the Army for a year?” Arnie asked. “We did everything. Running around playing soldiers. Building bridges. Going on route marches. Jumping out of helicopters. Tandem parachuting — wow, you’ve gotta try that sometime.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
Arnie shrugged his shoulders, but secretly he was very pleased with himself. He’d been right: once you got past all Skylark’s defences — and, boy, was she ever rigged with booby traps, claymore mines and grenades that would go off at any false step — she was okay.
The Desert Road curved through the tussock. On the left side loomed three volcanic cones, their tops dusted with ice and snow. Clouds did conjuring tricks with the mountains, obscuring them one moment, revealing them the next.
Skylark was still curious. “What’s all this mother ship business you have going with Hoki?”
“When I was a kid,” Arnie answered, “Auntie Hoki took me to E.T. I’d never seen anything like it. Do you remember at the end when the mother ship comes to collect E.T.? Well, I started to call Auntie Hoki ‘Mother Ship’. It was just a game but it gave me a good feeling when I was young to think that if ever I was in trouble I could just phone home and Auntie Hoki would come to get me. Now I think Hoki and I still do it just to drive Auntie Bella crazy!”
The ute sped onward through the falling afternoon, skirting the bases of the mountains, pushing north.
Skylark and Arnie reached Auckland by nightfall. The Skytower was directly ahead, winking in the twilight sky. Downtown Auckland was buzzing with traffic and action. Arnie eased the ute through the streets.
“Decision time,” Arnie said. “We can either stop over and make for Parengarenga in the morning or we can have a dinner break, drive through the night and arrive at dawn.”